


To Weave a Tale of Her

by ShinjiShazaki



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Fluff, HSO Round 2, Rose Lalonde's never-ending anxiety fest, writers on writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-05
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinjiShazaki/pseuds/ShinjiShazaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Once upon a time,” Rose says abruptly, late one night, “I planned to make my living off words.”</p><p>A discourse on writing and romance, courtesy of Rose Lalonde and her inability to be straightforward.</p><p>Submission for Team Rose <3 Kanaya for the second round of the Homestuck Shipping Olympics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Weave a Tale of Her

“Once upon a time,” Rose says abruptly, late one night, “I planned to make my living off words.”

Kanaya sits before her, holding one of Rose’s hands to paint her nails in a deep shade of red. She looks up and smiles, skin glowing. It makes Rose’s stomach hurt with panic; she hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and she hadn’t meant to have Kanaya look at her like that.

“What did you write about?” Kanaya asks.

“Wizards, mostly.” She tries not to wince when Kanaya lifts her hand to blow gently at her nails; her fingers twitch nonetheless. “A suitably unimaginative topic for a child’s first attempts to master the written word.”

“Fantasy is unimaginative?”

“It’s rather blasé, given how prevalent it is.” She flicks her eyes away when Kanaya looks up.

“Did you produce much work?”

She snorts out a dead laugh, but she cannot stop answering. “Ten year old girls aren’t well known for their ability to steadily produce more than giggling and fodder. But I did my best and filled a few notebooks by the time the game rolled around.”

“Have you truly been writing for five of your Earth years?” Her smile widens, and she lets go of her hand to take its twin. As she attends to those bare nails, she says, “I think that’s quite admirable. Do you still have those notebooks?”

“You’re not reading them. They’re dreadful.”

She laughs aloud, and Rose thinks for a wild moment it sounds like glittering crystal chimes. “I would say the same thing of displaying the designs of my youth. I won’t pry. But still.”

“But what.”

“Is there anything more recent you’d be willing to share with me?”

Responses fester under her ashen skin, passive-aggressive and otherwise, and none of them are truly valid. An astonishing alien vampire would be uninterested in human literature (but Kanaya enjoys so many of the books littering Rose’s remade home); wizardry is a fool’s errand (but the reality of magic could be endlessly inspiring); or she hasn’t written anything since the game’s end a year and a half before (but she can’t admit to something as paltry as writer’s block to a girl who came back from the dead and helped create two universes, no matter how vexing it is).

But she just stares at Kanaya, sitting with her smile still strong. She looks at her, her housemate for so long in a house too big for two people who are alone. She watches her breathe and feels the cool fingers nestled in her palm. She remembers the way she whispered air onto her fingernails, and recalls Kanaya’s game title.

“Not right at this moment,” she manages to say.

\-------

She spends an hour trying to research the etymology of Kanaya’s title and comes up with next to nothing to really use. At the start, the prospect of having almost nothing to base a story around is petrifying: she sits outside with a notebook in her lap, a pen in her hand, and an emptiness that is too vast in her head. She closes the notebook and puts her head on her knees. In the eventuality that she is asked what she’s doing, she intends to say she’s trying to concentrate.

Rose stays up late with Kanaya; the two of them watch fashion shows and the occasional movie. In the dark, Kanaya is bright. She is vivacious: glorious in her nocturnal and rainbow drinker nature. When she’s positive Kanaya isn’t looking, she studies her face. She attempts to pick words that would best be suited in describing the curve of her cheek, the cut of her jaw, the gold hue of her eyes and how they’re complimented so well by her bright skin. Everything seems hackneyed, and she settles back into the couch with her legs drawn up to instead wonder how her skin feels.

In a moment of boldness, extant only because Kanaya has fallen asleep next to her, she brushes her thumb along her cheek. It reminds her of silken powder. She absconds to her room and sits on her bed with the notebook in her lap, but she still doesn’t write for a long time. By the time the sun fully rises over the trees, though, she decides on a main character and a very basic plot sketch.

She plans to write a story of a woman of the desert who leaves her home at the behest of her dying mother and the discovery she makes of her birthright as a sylph, a mystical creature of the air capable of magic.

The romantic interest is an afterthought undefined and left for when she wakes.

\-------

A week later, Kanaya inquires, “Have you gotten any ideas lately?”

Rose keeps from vocalizing lest she stammer. Eventually, she says, “I have.”

A silence; Kanaya regards her with an unreadable gaze. She smiles. “That’s wonderful to hear. I look forward to the day you wish to share.” Before Rose can think to deflect the subject, she speaks again: “Would you be interested in seeing a few new designs of mine? I think they require a critique.”

They spend the evening discussing fabrics and their patterns. It takes a little while before Rose notices they move together naturally as they sit on the floor, and it takes her much longer to address the matter and think to shift and take her shoulder away. There is comfort, somehow, in the coolness of Kanaya’s body next to her. It helps to quell the sear of her own body, if only a bit.

Kanaya is daring; she is brave. She sets her hand atop Rose’s when she pauses in tracing a line to illuminate her point. In the silence that swiftly falls, she caresses the space between her knuckles with gentle strokes of her fingertips.

Rose is pathetically aware that her statements and clumsy affections would not go unrequited. She excuses herself anyway and hurries back to her room. Surprising herself, she spends the rest of the night writing the first two chapters of her sylph’s story. She introduces no one but secondary characters and does not address a romance.

When she falls asleep, she dreams of a woman leaving the desert with an eager smile, and she wakes up wanting to ask Kanaya about her life before the game.

\-------

Another week passes, and she realizes that she’s paying attention to the world again.

When they venture out for new books, she notices everything around. She notices colors; she notices sounds; she notices scents; and she pauses in her stride every so often to take in everything. The bookstore is filled with heavy mustiness: the books are sharp in scent and contrast the muddled fragrance of the carpet and the coffee stains in them. She feels the sleekness of new releases and the velour of classics. She walks to the furthest corner and hides in the stacks, closing her eyes to best see the library the sylph frequents in her studies of spells.

She had never ignored Kanaya before, per se. She listened closely, all the better to have context for verbal sparring. But she hears her now, the lilts and rolls of her voice. She hears the small whisper-hisses that come naturally with her fangs; she hears the way she takes great care with each word. The conclusion she comes to is quick: even if Kanaya doesn’t write prose, there is poetry in her voice with all the precision of her rambling. She drinks it in. When their conversations go long into the night, she lets her eyes close to focus on nothing but Kanaya. It is a very easy thing to do.

Rose writes; she scratches out her words; she rips out pages and sets them aside; and she sits for long hours in front of her computer to type up her story and edits every last word with the care Kanaya speaks all language with.

\-------

Despite her childhood desire, she would have sooner burned her work than share it. It is terrifying to the last, and while one can always dismiss the unnecessary and useless criticism that can be made, it is a matter of courage to display your work to someone you respect. Rose works for weeks on end, formatting and editing and deleting and writing up again, and she spends a long, sleepless night going over everything one last time. Eyes aching and fingertips numb, she sits and waits for the printout to be done.

It is her birthday. There are presents that arrived early by mail from the others, perfectly color-coded. There are e-mails in her inbox she leaves for later; she can’t stand looking at a screen anymore. When she descends, Kanaya is already awake and sitting at the table with the presents arranged charmingly in a semicircle, corresponding tags open and displaying the well-wishes. Front and center, though, is a meticulously wrapped present in green paper. It is tied with pink-lavender ribbon, and its bow is perfectly festive to match the snowfall outside.

“Good morning,” Kanaya says. She smiles broadly, rising from her chair. “Happy birthday.”

For a moment, she is too tired to respond. She blinks. “At least you didn’t say ‘happy wriggling day’ this year.”

She pouts; it is painfully adorable. “It’s hardly my fault if I don’t know every human idiom by heart. Aside from that, it’s still confusing that you have these ‘birthdays’ so often.”

“Yes, confound our swift moving planet and stars. If only we had sweeps to better match your own.”

Her pout fades for concern. “Are you all right? You look like you haven’t slept at all. I was more than willing to let you sleep in. This is supposed to be a special day for you.”

“Yea and verily, a world-destroyer once possessed by cruel elder gods should sleep in on particular days of the years.” She moves to the table and sets the pile of paper down with practiced nonchalance. “Is your present for the year another handmade masterpiece?”

A pause. “You thought the dress was a masterpiece?”

She is too tired to stop her smile and her words: “Why wouldn’t I?”

The glowing skin intensifies any and all changes made by a flush, and so the jade color is almost iridescent. Rose thinks it could be called ethereal, even. She wants terribly to brush her thumb against her cheeks and once more feel the softness she can still recall from weeks ago. Because she is so tired, she does precisely that. Kanaya does not retreat from it; she closes her eyes. Rose looks at her face for a long time before drawing away her hand. She turns to the table and sets her other hand lightly on the paper.

“As it so happens,” she says, “I’ve made you a present.”

Her eyes blink open; confusion tilts her brows. “Isn’t that against the rules of a birthday?”

She laughs quietly. “Birthdays have no rules save the ones the birthday girl makes up. My rule is that I get to give you a present.” She taps a finger on the top of the pile.

“Oh.” For a moment, she is still. There is indecision in her face; she does not know which way to go to retrieve her sudden present. She slowly reaches out across the table for it, leaning slightly as she goes. When Rose leans back into her, she goes completely still. She looks at her, brows lifted slightly.

Rose takes pity, smiles, and sets the pages carefully in Kanaya’s hands. She attempts to stand by with a cool gaze, but fails and looks at the packages on the table. She fiddles with an exuberantly curly ribbon and doesn’t pay attention to its color. There is a long, long silence, and she just manages to keep from chewing on her lip.

“‘The Rapture of the Sylph’?” Kanaya asks.

“Yes,” she mumbles back.

Another silence. Kanaya smiles and touches her thumb to check the depth of the pages. “How long did this take you to write?”

She doesn’t look up; she shrugs vaguely. “Around three months.”

“I see. This is truly impressive.” She turns over the first page, mindful of the homemade string binding. “I’m aware that Earth literature restricts its titles, but there are usually summaries of some sort. Is this not the case for your story?”

She shrugs again. “If I ever managed to get this printed, I’d write up a blurb for the back cover. The dust jacket, perhaps.”

“I see. But you don’t have one in mind to share with me?”

“I’m sharing the whole damn book with you, free of charge and before it ever sees a street release.” She pauses and releases the ribbon. “I could use your assistance in creating a blurb, to be honest. Best to have an honest critic than an adoring fan.”

“Can I not be both?”

“Both what?”

“Honest and adoring.”

Rose wishes she hadn’t let go of the ribbon; she has no dignified or sensible place to put her hands. She manages another shrug; it is painfully lame and she knows it. “We’ll see what happens once you read it.”

For the next three hours, she is in torture she struggles to describe. Kanaya had sat on the couch almost immediately, curling her skirted legs beneath her as she started. After five minutes of being stared at, she chuckles and shoos Rose away with gentle waves of her fingers. The two hours and fifty-five minutes following her banishment, she meanders around the house. She tries to make something for breakfast, but she is confounded by wanting to leave Kanaya in perfect silence. That, and her stomach is suddenly clenched so hard that it overrides her sleep-deprived hunger.

She goes to her room and knits for around forty-three minutes. She sits at her desk, thinks of checking her birthday e-mails, and can’t bring herself to touch the keyboard. She turns a pen over and over in her fingers for ten minutes straight before setting it gently on the desk and putting her hands in her lap.

Midway through the hours two and three, she sits on her bed and swears to every single deity she is aware of that she will never let anyone read anything of hers ever again. Writing is a waste of paper, of ink, of every power that can possibly be tapped. She wants to run downstairs and steal the pages back because it is the most dreadful thing she could have given to Kanaya. That she called it a present is the most grievous lie she’s ever uttered. It is so awful; it is too forward; it is unaccountably dull; and it deserves every single scathing statement Kanaya’s pretty mouth could make.

She spends the last ten minutes thinking very hard about Kanaya’s pretty mouth.

It is three hours on the dot that she returns downstairs. Kanaya hasn’t moved an inch from her place on the couch. Rose knows because she starts at the sound of approaching footsteps and stretches lazily when she sees who it is. She smiles and closes the book by its last page.

Rose is terrified she might throw up. “So you’re done?”

“I am. You came at just the right time.”

She wants to run back upstairs and contact Dave to turn the clock back far enough to allow her to give her past self a beautifully paradoxical punch in the mouth.

Kanaya pats the space beside her on the couch.

Cursing her legs every step of the way, Rose walks over and sits next to her.

Silence.

“This is very charming,” Kanaya says.

“What.”

She laughs. “Fantasy isn’t usually my genre of choice, but I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy a fantasy devoid of rainbow drinkers. This is very engaging.” She lifts the pages and sets them in her lap to fan them quietly from cover to cover. “The Sylph’s journey is very well rounded. I was always willing to follow wherever she went.” She chuckles. “And I was resoundingly surprised that there was almost no gothic angle to this story at all. A straightforward bright fantasy. You surpass my expectations to the last, Rose.”

Rose says nothing at all. She works up a tiny shred of courage to put her hand by Kanaya’s knee.

“And, of course, the Sylph is well met. The Seer was the perfect companion for her journey. Wise, cunning, and brave...if reckless in her bravery.”

“She doesn’t have much bravery at all,” Rose says. “Just recklessness. All recklessness. Bravado for the Sylph.”

“Oh yes, I did pick up on that. It was very clear if you understood the Seer’s character. It was endearing, if insufferable at times.”

She bursts. “Kanaya, you are aware that my erstwhile brother typifies my writing as ‘fan fiction,’ aren’t you?”

“I am.” She thumbs through a few pages. “And I feel compelled to remark upon the Seer’s unnecessary hesitance in regard to everything. Perhaps this can be something I can assist in being resolved before publication?”

“Kanaya, for fuck’s _sake_ —”

They meet halfway. Dimly, Rose remembers writing something similar to the scene she finds herself in: a Sylph kissing a Seer. The Sylph tastes of flame, of the damp heat found only after a storm in the desert; Kanaya tastes very much like cinnamon, the kind Rose likes to sprinkle on her toast in the morning.

She decides to rewrite the scene later and surges forward to pin Kanaya beneath her on the couch.


End file.
